Top 180 Quotes & Sayings by Alan Dershowitz - Page 2

When you discriminate against anyone, you discriminate against everyone. It's a display of terrible intolerance.

There are many levels of truth.

I don't think the law exists to arrive at the truth. If it did, we wouldn't have exclusionary rules, we wouldn't have presumptions of innocence, we wouldn't have proof beyond reasonable doubt. There's an enormous difference between the role of truth in law and the role of truth in science. In law, truth is one among many goals.

I never place limits on the potential success of my students. If they're going into acting, they're going to win the Oscar... If they're going into law, they're going to be chief justice.

Doing something because God has said to do it does not make a person moral: it merely tells us that person is a prudential believer, akin to the person who obeys the command of an all-powerful secular king.

I tell my students, if you ever become comfortable with your role as criminal defense lawyer, it's time to quit. It should be a constant source of discomfort, because you're dealing with incredible moral ambiguity, and you've been cast into a role which is not enviable.

I talk with my hands. Some people don't like that. That's who I am.

In the real world in which we live, you always have to choose between evils. And in choosing between evils, you have to have moral criteria for how to make those choices.

I'm never satisfied unless I get the last word.

There is a paranoid streak in American life. Radio talk show hosts tend to foment that paranoid streak in American life.

I think most defense attorneys honestly believe the principle that says, 'Better 10 guilty go free than even one possibly innocent person be convicted.'

Juries are not computers. They are composed of human beings who evaluate evidence differently.

In some ways, Israel has achieved a peace. There are fewer rockets being sent into Sderot, there are no rockets to speak of from the North, there has been very little terrorism from the West Bank. It's a kind of peace. I hope for a better and more enduring peace. Peace is not an endgame; we will never be completely at peace.

Every celebrity case I've been involved in - I've been involved in a great many - the one thing you can be sure of is they don't get the same justice as everybody else. It could be worse, it could be better, it's never the same.

I think we're seeing privacy diminish, not by laws... but by young people who don't seem to value their privacy.

The worst mistake you can make is underrating your enemy. Assuming that they're evil - I think it's a terrible thing to do.

I feel like my 50 years at Harvard were an interlude. I'm really a New Yorker.

I believe that if Israel were to put an end to the settlements in the West Bank tomorrow, as it did in Gaza, there would still be reluctance on the part of the Palestinian Authority to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish secular democracy.

The same independence that got me into trouble in high school got me praise in college.

You can't think about terrorism without thinking about Palestinian terrorism. Palestinians began international terrorism. It started with them in 1968. They used it as the first resort, not the last resort. They invented it, they perfected it, they benefited from it and they taught the world how to use it and that it would be successful.

In my neighborhood, everyone had an opinion on the local cantor. You didn't go to a synagogue to listen to the rabbi's sermon. You went to listen to the cantor. It was like a concert.

I think extremists within the base may very well move the Democratic party away from its pro-Israel position.

There are two kinds of terrorism. Rational terrorism such as Palestinian terrorism and apocalyptic terrorism like Sept. 11. You have to distinguish between the two.

I charge my wealthy clients a lot and put 10 per cent in a fund which I use to pay the expenses of my poorer clients. When the government gangs up on the poor schnook in the street, someone has to stand up for him.

Any human being has private thoughts.

Israel can't make peace without the clear support of the United States.

I love the Bible.

I never had a strategy about my life. I didn't have enough information to have a strategy. I'm the first person in my family to go to college. I had no family mentors.

What the United States has to do is send a clear message to Iran that they will not be able to develop nuclear weapons. Why endure the difficulty of sanctions if they are not going to be able to develop nuclear weapons anyway?

I learn from experience.

The pervasiveness of guns in our society is destroying America.

The sad reality is that there are no purely domestic issues in Israel. Issues that would be dealt with by municipalities in other countries - such as how to deal with a dangerous bridge or how to resolve conflicts between religious and secular bus riders - become major international issues when they occur in Israel.

There's no evidence that I'm aware of that guns protect liberty.

Scientists search for truth. Philosophers search for morality. A criminal trial searches for only one result: proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

The law is agnostic about truth.

The Israeli military plays more than a critical role in defending the citizens of the Jewish state. It also plays an important social, scientific and psychological role in preparing its young citizens for the challenging task of being Israelis in a difficult world.

Individuals have the right to pick and choose which expressions to condemn, which to praise and which to say nothing about. Governments, however, must remain neutral as to the content of expression. And governments must protect the rights of all to express even the most despicable of views.

Well you know, all law is about injustice.

I think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it - also realizing it.

Candor and accountability in a democracy is very important. Hypocrisy has no place.

I've thought of publishing a book of my hate mail, but I don't own the rights to the letters.

I'm not a single-issue person, but I spend so much time on Israel because it is so unfairly condemned around the world.

I was a Jewish rabbinical student for 12 years, and studied the Bible all the time.

I've written important articles on prevention, on the concept of the preventive state, how the law is moving much more in an area of trying to prevent wrongs than trying to deal with them after they occur. That will be my academic/intellectual legacy.

I know Obama, I like Obama, I voted for Obama.

I think that lawyers are terrible at admitting that they're wrong. And not just admitting it; also realizing it. Most lawyers are very successful, and they think that because they're making money and people think well of them, they must be doing everything right.

There will never be another Ed Koch. He was an original, but he represented a significant, if shrinking, segment of American Jewry who refused to compromise their liberal values, their support for Israel or their Jewish pride.

President Obama has earned my vote on the basis of his excellent judicial appointments, his consensus-building foreign policy and the improvements he has brought about in the disastrous economy he inherited.

I am deeply concerned that, without peace and a two-state solution, the Jewish and democratic nature of Israel is in danger. That's why I have opposed Israel's settlement policy since 1973, and that's why I have favored a two-state solution since 1967.

The struggle for morality never stays won. It's always in process.

Laws are important precisely because in a democracy they reflect the attitudes and aspirations of those they govern.

I've had such a satisfying life professionally and personally. I hope my tombstone says, 'Never boring.'

The law is agnostic about truth. It's very skeptical of ultimate truth. That's why freedom of speech permits lies to be told.

In the Pentagon Papers case, the government asserted in the Supreme Court that the publication of the material was a threat to national security. It turned out it was not a threat to U.S. security. But even if it had been, that doesn't mean that it couldn't be published.

Ed Koch will never 'rest in peace.' That was not his way. He was always nervously squirming, while making others squirm as well. Comfort was not his goal. He understood that to be a proud and assertive Jew meant never being able to leave a sigh of relief and say, 'It's over, we are at peace, we can now put down our guard and relax.'

The vast majority of gun owners don't kill, but people who do kill, tend to kill with guns, and often with illegal guns.

We don't have an Official Secrets Act in the United States, as other countries do. Under the First Amendment, freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of association are more important than protecting secrets.

In today's distorted world of 'human rights,' truth takes a back seat to ideology, and false claims - especially those that 'support' radical ideologies - persist even after they have been exposed.

Foolish liberals who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a safety hazard don't see the danger of the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use this same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like.

Law is an imperfect profession in which success can rarely be achieved without some sacrifice of principle. Thus all practicing lawyers -- and most others in the profession -- will necessarily be imperfect, especially in the eyes of young idealists. There is no perfect justice, just as there is no absolute in ethics. But there is perfect injustice, and we know it when we see it.